


Throughout the Years

by pedanticsoothsayer



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 12:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14105475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pedanticsoothsayer/pseuds/pedanticsoothsayer
Summary: Patrons come and go, but the Hanged Man never forgets.





	Throughout the Years

**Author's Note:**

> Alternatively titled "I wrote a pretentious thing six months ago after finishing DA2 for the umpteenth time, forgot about it, and am posting it instead of deleting or editing it."
> 
> Alternatively alternatively titled "Dear god this game hurts me."

When Hawke laughs, it fills the room.

 

Varric spins stories, with his hands held above his head, and she’s always the first to throw her glass down in a fit of laughter. She makes the dimly-lit tavern feel bigger.

 

He’s an extravagant liar, but he’s an entertainer, a people-pleaser, and always ready to perform for an audience. When confronted about plausibility, he says these things usually start with a grain of truth. Where it goes after that is up to the teller. He talks about his brother’s encounters with less than savory members of the Merchant’s Guild, dealings heard third-hand from a templar he used to play cards with, even retellings of Hawke’s own adventures; He never stars in his own stories.

 

She trades him for tales from her smuggling days and her life on the run as an apostate; sensitive things not mean to be talked about publicly. The tavern is loud, so it doesn’t matter.

 

Her brother frowns and Varric laughs at him.

 

The ale tastes like piss and the patrons don’t smell much better, but it’s cheap even for Lowtown. It’s Varric’s favorite place because it’s out of the way of people he’d rather avoid and there’s always someone to ply his stories on.

 

It quickly becomes Hawke’s favorite place because of a tight purse and because anything is better than spending evenings cooped up in a filthy hovel with a leering uncle and a mother whose head is trapped in the past.

 

Sometimes, they get Carver to relax a little and enjoy himself. But it’s hard. He’s loud and quiet all at once; his anger is telling, his tells are subtle. Bottled up emotions meet the resentment of a boy who still didn’t know who he wanted to be when he became a man. He drinks deeper the nights Hawke mentions Bethany, unable to escape the feeling something is missing. Guilt and rage and jealousy are a bitter mix, but he hates himself the most for it.

 

Sometimes, they bring Aveline. The daughter of a disgraced Chevalier turned-knight-turned-refugee-turned-city-guard. She turns her head and sighs more often than not, at Hawke’s disgard for the law and Varric’s crude sense of humor. She respects Hawke, though it would take a lot of alcohol for her to admit it. A few hours of ignoring tales of their of illegal activities is worth not having to stare at the ceiling in the barracks on her nights off.

 

Each time they meet, they mean to go over plans for ill-advised business ventures and instead spend hours drinking and laughing. The fire begins to die and the barkeep shoots them nasty looks when they ask for more rounds despite the late hour.

 

They toast to the future, fortunes, and friendship.

 

\---

 

Hawke brags that she attracts strange company and Varric can’t disagree.

 

She brings her friends. And her not-quite-yet friends. They’re all odd, but Varric himself is no exception.

 

Merrill seems out of place in the Hanged Man, in the alienage, in Kirkwall in general, with her doe-like eyes and penchant for blood magic. They try not to talk about the blood magic. She may miss a joke on the first pass, but she’s the only one of them to laugh more than Hawke does once she gets it.

 

Isabela is already a near permanent fixture in the tavern, only leaving at Hawke’s insistence. The holes in her story are more than enough to sink the ship she herself sunk, but if there’s one thing she’s good at, it’s sleights of hand. Lines of questioning are turned just as quickly back on the questioner and summarily dropped.

 

Fenris is many things, but most of all not a slave. His broodiness is tempered with a begrudging, subtle wit, often lost on the rest. He may not trust mages, but he trusts Hawke so he stays. Despite his better judgment, he claims. He does not hide his anger, airing his dissatisfaction aloud, but always returns.

 

Anders is angry too, but more subtly so. He may carry his past differently, letting his resentment build over time.It simmers until it boils and he lets his worst side show. The side possessed by a demon.

“Nobody’s perfect,” Hawke says and shrugs.

 

The number of chairs they pack around the corner table grows as Hawke brings them in like stray dogs, fresh wounds and all. It’s hard to put a name to what they have, because they all know they wouldn’t spend time together if it weren’t for her. Isabela gets on Aveline’s nerves. Anders gets on Fenris’s nerves. Fenris gets on Anders’s nerves. Merrill gets on both of their nerves’. Incitation turn to argument, but is quickly swept under the rug with Hawke’s lowbrow humor.

 

Hawke collects outsiders, if only because she’s one herself. She keeps them together like glue whether she realizes it or not and Varric admires her for it. Misery haunts Kirkwall like the Black City looms over the Fade, but keeping it at bay is best done with company.

 

\---

 

They leave a spot empty for Carver, most nights without even realizing it. Because he isn’t dead, at least not in the traditional sense.

 

Wealth doesn’t change Hawke or her priorities or her sense of humor. She laughs easily, but it’s hard to miss the distant look in her eye. To distract, she tells more jokes. Vulnerability is her weakness and she’s fine with the irony.

 

Gossip is exchanged like a rare commodity over drinks and cards, because even if they can’t stand each other, they at least make decent company. Slowly “better than nothing” is replaced with begrudging appreciation. For them, it works.  
  
Bela cheats and everyone knows it, except for Merrill who never seems to notice her pockets are just as full when she leaves as when she arrives no matter how poorly she plays. Varric stays for the drama, secretly loving every minute. The rest enjoy themselves well enough, except Anders who was known to lose to Hawke’s dog on occasion.

 

He stays for Hawke. They all do.

 

They pull up extra chairs most nights, for the Chantry boy who is reluctant to drink or gamble or for Aveline’s boyfriend. Sebastian has his own faults and mistakes, fitting right in with the rest of them easily. Donnic is an easy target because the glances he gives Aveline are so soft and genuine and prone to being teased.

 

More often than not they stay out later than intended, wandering home at early hours. They fill the Hanged Man with merriment, their shared time there a fixture in their daily lives.

 

\---

 

Over time, it’s clear the toll the city has on them. For better or for worse, Kirkwall seems intent on making them suffer.

 

Isabela avoids them outright for weeks on end. Fenris and Merrill struggle in their own ways, finding that healing and hurting are not mutually exclusive. Anders vacillates between moments of genuine happiness and withdrawn moodiness. Sebastian’s patience is wire-thin.

 

Even Hawke is laughing less. Fame and renown and pain and loss have taken their toll.

 

It seems like Aveline is the only one of them who is truly thriving, but even she begins to skip evenings out, more stressed from work than ever. Just as it seems they are all falling apart, Kirkwall is too. At every seam and crack, threatening to break apart.

 

Varric licks his own wounds, wondering what happened.

 

\---

 

Like a calm before the storm, everything seems normal. Everything seemed normal. Throughout invasions and disagreements, even if they weren’t speaking or spending time together, at least their merry band was in Kirkwall. Now they were being separated to the winds. Slowly, but almost deliberately.

 

Aveline’s face is buried in her hands. Merrill sits silently in the corner. Isabela traces patterns in the table with her knife. Fenris stares at the ceiling. Varric stares at the floor.

 

They talk about the future.

 

\---

 

Merrill spends her evenings in the Hanged Man more out of habit than desire. She sits alone, tracing the stains and carvings in the wood-grain that represent years of what can now only be called happiness. Her days are spent helping other elves in the aftermath and she deserves this little rest.

 

Kirkwall feels empty.

 

Aveline comes by to check on her, but never stays long. Rarely, Fenris visits. He keeps busy, avoiding the city as much as he can.

 

In the weeks and months between letters, she dares to wonder how her friends are faring. She realizes that maybe they wouldn’t all use that word, but she’s damn well going to. For all they’d gone through together, there’s no way they hadn’t come out the other side friends.

 

For weeks at a time, she would hear nothing from Varric and Isabela or Hawke and Anders. Maybe not hearing anything is better. War brings chaos and they were better off hiding in it.

 

She never hears from Sebastian.

 

Merrill hopes for the best. But nothing will ever be the same, because none of them are the same people they were ten years ago.

 

They’d lost so much, suffering and aching but growing all the same. That pain had to mean something. after all. Didn’t it?

 

The world was changing too fast and there was no time to reclaim what they’d lost.

 

\---

 

The tavern is empty. Cassandra Pentaghast looks around, taking in the fact that it is much smaller than she had imagined it from Varric’s tales.

 

\---

 

Before Merrill knows it, the world is falling apart.

 

It was already awful, chaotic, hopeless.

 

But despite it all, she never imagined losing Hawke.

 

She and Aveline hold each other after receiving their respective letters. Bela makes the trip from some distant port and arrives weeks later and joins them.

 

She wants it to help, but it doesn’t.

 

\---

 

Varric tells stories, but they’re different now. He focuses on the ridiculous lives of the people he encounters on a daily basis as Viscount. The cheap imitations of petty nobles never fail to make Merrill laugh or Aveline roll her eyes.

 

He doesn’t tell stories about heroes anymore.

 

Because you don’t laugh at heroes, you laugh with them. When you laugh, you start to care, almost always too much.

 

If there’s one thing he’s good at, it’s avoiding responsibility so he drags Aveline with him at least once a week. They need it as much as Merrill does.

 

They never get around to reestablishing weekly card games, choosing instead to spend their time with other distractions. Focus on the future, talk about plans for reconstruction and growth.

 

Maybe it’s best this way.


End file.
